I think MySpace is one of the ugliest, most cluttered, unfriendly, complicated community-style websites available today. I can't understand why it's so popular.
Not only is it constantly broken, and generally slow, but it is so poorly designed that, until you are very familiar with the service, figuring out how to do something, or even what can be done, is quite difficult. Furthermore, because it allows users to customize their own pages with gaudy background images and blaring soundtracks, most of the user pages look and function even worse than MySpace itself.
It duplicates portions of other Internet platforms like email and instant messaging. It even duplicates itself on occasion: you tell me, what's the difference between a blog, a bulletin, and a message that I send to all of my friends? And while I understand the difference between a blog comment, a message, and a comment on someone's profile page, trying to determine which method someone will use to communicate with me or which method I should use to communicate with them is not always easy. I actually had a back and forth conversation with someone using comments posted on one another's profile page. While it's easy enough to follow for the people in the conversation, It's annoying as all hell to try to follow on someone else's page. So what's the point of having it there anyway.
All of this is terrible. But the thing that I hate most about MySpace is that EVERYONE uses it and, therefore, if I want to be a part of EVERYONE, then I have to too. Radio personalities, other photographers, wonderful bands, old friends, new friends, potential customers, my sister's best friend from high school… EVERYONE is on MySpace.
How did something this terrible get this popular?
So, that's it. I give in, check out my "MySpace Profile":http://www.myspace.com/revjim and add me as a friend. K THX.
